This is how I imagine the main character, a young English Quaker who emigrates to America in 1850.
This town was a major stop on the Underground Railroad. Always a radical place, Oberlin College was the first to admit women and African Americans.
Many 19th-century American houses had “sick rooms” off the kitchen because someone often had a fever and needed tending. This one is at Hale’s Farm, Ohio.
Henry "Box" Brown was a slave who mailed himself to freedom.
In researching the novel, I learned how to quilt the way my heroine would have, and made this all by hand.
Their unity is based on shared understanding of the "Inner Light" in each person and a shared practice of silent worship.
"Tracy Chevalier has woven a rich tapestry here, setting her protagonist at the crossroads of a time explosive with issues surrounding slavery, rapidly changing industry, America's pioneering spirit and its racial divide." Read more